P2 Workflow

D10S

D10S

Well-known member
Here is my dilemma. I have a client that I would have to go out in the field (out of state) and shoot approx. 5 hours of footage per day, 5 days a week, for a month. So approx. 100 hours of video to bring back to edit. It will be a controlled (interview) setting each day, say 5 one hour interviews.

I am looking at purchasing either the HVX200 or the 170 to do the shooting. I am most concerned with backing up and transporting this much video from the site each day, back to the hotel each night and eventually flying back home to load for editing. I'll probably have a couple P2 cards, but I'll need a laptop and external drives to store all this footage for travel.

I've been a tape guy thus far. This is would be my first HD P2 adventure. What would be my best work flow for storage and back-up in this situation?
 
Shoot>laptop>external hard drive. How much you need depends on what format you shoot. Shooting 1080 would mean about 300 GB a day. Shooting 720/24pN would mean about 120 GB a day. And so on.
 
I'd probably shoot 720/24pN. So I'd need over 2 terabytes of storage space.

If I use a MacBook Pro can I plug the P2 directly into the laptop to transfer to the hard drive or would I need to use the camera or a P2 reader?

This may be a bit anal, but what about back-up? What if an external drive fails me before I get home to start editing? I can't afford to lose all this footage.
 
If it's a new MacBook (i.e., newer than a G4), you'll need to use a reader or an ExpressCard adapter. (You can find low-cost Windows laptops which have the right slot.)

You can double the hard drive capacity and use half of it for backup, but that's almost certainly overkill. (Even so, 4 1TB drives aren't terribly onerous, whether in terms of price or portability.)
 
Firestore, P2 Store, or P2 Gear. Which would help me the most? Or are any of these really necessary if I just get an Expresscard adapter?
 
Firestore has the most continuous capability and capacity.

But you are dealing with an external HD by doing that
 
D10S said:
Firestore, P2 Store, or P2 Gear. Which would help me the most? Or are any of these really necessary if I just get an Expresscard adapter?
Click to expand...


Ya know, if you were shooting interviews, you could just stream to a hard drive through a Firewire cable and avoid a lot of putzing around with P2 cards.

The FireStore is great, but can be noisy because of their cooling fan and another issue is it won't allow capture of files that are longer than a few minutes. It breaks them at the 1.87 Gb size which can be annoying when editing, having to deal with that.

.
 
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D10S said:
Firestore, P2 Store, or P2 Gear. Which would help me the most? Or are any of these really necessary if I just get an Expresscard adapter?
Click to expand...

For the price of any of those, you could have three or more adequate laptops.
 
I can transfer media directly from the camera to a laptop from the P2 card via firewire correct? Then I can just transfer the files to a laptop/external drive at the end of the day. How fast (long) a transfer will this be?
 
Calling it a speed in terms of "real time" is a misnomer because it depends on what mode you shot in. Better to refer to it in terms of gigabytes per minute. Using a firewire drive or importing from the camera through firewire, it's about 1 gigabyte per minute.
 
I assume that since you are transferring a file from the camera compared to capturing from tape, you don't have to worry about wear and tear on your camera to transfer your footage like you did going from MiniDV.
 
That's what I refer to as "real time" -- gigabytes per minute.

A 16 GB full card at 1X RT would transfer in 16 minutes.

It's not video related at all -- at least to me.

But I'll clarify it in the future.
 
Point being that if someone shot 20 minutes of footage, they might expect it to take 20 minutes to transfer -- whereas in reality it might take 8, even at 1 gig per minute, if they shot 720pN...
 
I worked on Bam Margera's new xmas movie as a camera guy (I'm also an editor) and we shot 3 to 5 cameras a day all on p2.. this is the best set up, it works, I do this when I'm on the road:

-shoot 720 pn
-two (or three if your budget will allow) 32 gig cards
-Macbook pro laptop with an express bus DuelAdapter ($110 at Tekserve)
-Caldigit Dual firewire VR, set to protection (raid 0) - it's a 800FW two slot drive so, you can buy extra drives from Caldigit. (you can even buy the raw 1 tb drives and screw them on the sleds yourself, that's what I do, i'm budget minded.. there are some good deals on raw 800gb drives now... but never buy Western Digital) or you can buy the 2tb G-Raid Drives (it's expensive at $1600 a pop but that's what Bam's movie did, we had 32 2 tb g-raids).. but whatever you do always do a backup for peace of mind... if you go Caldigit, you will have less to carry when you travel... you can buy the VR for as cheap as $340 and swap them out for the higher capacity drives...

so a 32 gig card will give you 85 mins of footage and will upload to the hd in about 8 mins. always check the uploaded footage in Final Cut before you wipe the P2 card. just do a quick scrub through every clip make sure you see it...
 
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pkendall said:
I worked on Bam Margera's new xmas movie as a camera guy (I'm also an editor) and we shot 3 to 5 cameras a day all on p2.. this is the best set up, it works, I do this when I'm on the road:

-shoot 720 pn
-use two (or three if your budget will allow) 32 gig cards
-Macbook pro laptop with an express bus adapter ($100 at Tekserve)
-Caldigit Dual firewire VR, set to protection (raid 0) - it's a 800FW two slot drive so, you can buy extra drives from Caldigit. (you can even buy the raw 1 tb drives and screw them on the sleds yourself, that's what I do, i'm budget minded.. there are some good deals on raw 800gb drives now... but never buy Western Digital) or you can buy the 2tb G-Raid Drives (it's expensive at $1600 a pop but that's what Bam's movie did, we had 32 2 tb g-raids).. but whatever you do always make a backup for peace of mind..

so a 32 gig card will give you 85 mins of footage and will upload to the hd in about 8 mins. always check the uploaded footage in Final Cut before you wipe the P2 card.
Click to expand...

Do you have a picture or link to the express adapter for the Macbook pro brought at tekserve?
 
pkendall said:
there are some good deals on raw 800gb drives now... but never buy Western Digital) ...
Click to expand...

care to elaborate?
I have been using WD exclusinvey for years (several TB worth in the last year alone) and love them.
mind you I don't use "mybook" products... I use internal SATA drives that I build into my own set-ups.
 
P2 Card Adapter Sold & Rented at Tekserve

P2 Card Adapter Sold & Rented at Tekserve

dantewaters said:
Do you have a picture or link to the express adapter for the Macbook pro brought at tekserve?
Click to expand...

Here's the link to the DuelAdapter sold at Tekserve (if you're not in the NYC area, you can call 212.381.6300 to have one shipped to you.)
http://www.tekserve.com/store/?search=duelAdapter.

We also rent the DuelAdapter upon request with our portable Final Cut Pro editing packages.
http://www.tekserve.com/rentals/equipment/pro-video.php

Happy Shooting,
Jazmin V. Hupp
www.tekserve.com
119 W. 23rd St (Between 6th & 7th Ave) New York, NY 10011
Store Hours: Mon-Fri 9a-8p, Sat 10a-6p, Sun 12p-6p EST
 
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